Is the vision of player authored content dead or dying?

mmoguy43

In many games, not just mmorpgs, there have been opportunities for the players to contribute to a game's content through modding, 3d model and texture submissions, and even voxel blueprints. Over time these games have blossomed and then within a few years have tapered off along with player content. From what I see on the game horizon fewer games developers are going the route of player made content in favor of procedurally generated content. Is it a sign that this isn't what the players or developers want? Or is it not as sustainable as previously thought?

cameltosis

To make awesome content, the tools you provide your community need to be awesome. 

This means massive amounts of extra work from the developers in order to make those tools, followed by the tools being really complicated. If you don;t put in the work up front, then the content that can be made will either be crap (if the tools are crap) or unstable (via hacky mods). 

For most types of games, its just not worth the investment. 

Even if you get the tools right, chances are 99% of the content is going to be crap. You actually run the risk of players having a worse experience because they installed shit mods / content. Whilst I'm sure more of us would like to create our own content, truth is we can't be bothered to learn the complexities of the tools, let alone put in the hours to create good content. 



The appetite is still there though. The level makers in games like Little Big Planet proved extremely popular, most likely because they were so simple to use. Games like Minecraft show our desire to create. I'm hoping that Camelot Unchained's CUBE system is going to allow us to create some awesome building schematics. 

Sovrath

mmoguy43 said:

In many games, not just mmorpgs, there have been opportunities for the players to contribute to a game's content through modding, 3d model and texture submissions, and even voxel blueprints. Over time these games have blossomed and then within a few years have tapered off along with player content. From what I see on the game horizon fewer games developers are going the route of player made content in favor of procedurally generated content. Is it a sign that this isn't what the players or developers want? Or is it not as sustainable as previously thought?

Can you be more specific?

I know that one can submit content to Everquest 1 and 2 (or at least one used to be able to, I'm not sure if that program is still up and running) and obviously 2nd life is all about player created content.

I think the biggest issue is having the content being a mishmash of "stuff' that doesn't fit into the world. Some player might think that is cool and some might hate it.

I recall in sword of the world there was a request by players to dye their own gear. The lead designer (if memory serves) made a comment along the lines that the players would just make a mess of it.

He didn't like the idea of players creating outlandish color combinations and ruining what he thought was the aesthetic of the game. 

And on a certain level I see his point. It's like the players who create monstrosities in games like Aion.

Phaserlight

I find that peer review is an incredibly important step in this process, coupled with some type of entry application.

In this way, you have a "closed" group of content creators, and only a select percent of that content is ever considered for implementation.

The process must be rigorous, but those that are skilled / enthused enough are out there. ;-)

SEANMCAD

mmoguy43 said:

In many games, not just mmorpgs, there have been opportunities for the players to contribute to a game's content through modding, 3d model and texture submissions, and even voxel blueprints. Over time these games have blossomed and then within a few years have tapered off along with player content. From what I see on the game horizon fewer games developers are going the route of player made content in favor of procedurally generated content. Is it a sign that this isn't what the players or developers want? Or is it not as sustainable as previously thought?

I dont see that at all happening and I am curious what your reference examples might be and how a developer focused on procedurally generated is related to modding which again I dont see at all the two related.

nariusseldon

Most player created content is crap. I wouldn't bother with it. 

fatears

For a while I created missions in the Neverwinter Foundry. I spent a lot of time on them, made atmospheric environments, balanced encounters and interesting questlines, then all my hard work got lost among the thousands of exploits, or two-minute trash that was churned out by people with no interest in actually creating something enjoyable. I gave up.  

Gdemami

Cannot die what was never alive...

Axehilt

Feels like basically the same subset of games it's always been.  That subset has grown a little since Doom (1993) total conversions, where nowadays it's more common for games to include modding options (Don't Starve Together, TW:Warhammer), but it's still not a widespread thing.

If you felt it was super popular in the near past, it was probably because you were fixated for a time on a narrow set of games that had it, and so when you lifted your head back out of those games to look around again it looked less player-authored by comparison.  But in all likelihood it's more or less unchanged (apart from the gradual growth since the early days.)

Deivos

Player authored content in mainstream gaming has been niche for a long time, but there are new things still coming up for them and it is technically growing, be it very slowly. With Bethesda making the push it has for FO4 mod support, Doom's snapmap, and the Skyrim remake's mod support, it's pushing player authored content into a more visible area of gaming.

There are a large amount of games that player authored content is a challenge for because of the very defined and narrow scope of most games. When you extend that to multiplayer you end up bringing many risks as well that most are more apt to avoid.

Part of why you haven't seen the likes of the Neverwinter Nights RPG in a long while. That level of player authored content is difficult to build the systems for and while it can greatly extend the value of a game it is also so reliant on the community and the unknown without necessarily growing profit that in for most it's not considered worth it.

However, there is also still the background of player authored content in a swathe of sim games, and new titles in that genre using modern tech have continued to be developed (such as Project Sansar) in the background outside of the AAA sphere.